Some people will pay for a subscription to a news site. How about two? Three? - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/11/so-some-people-will-pay-for-a-subscription-to-a-news-site-how-about-two-three/ <comment><USER3> This is why I think the best way forward is for groups of news sites to come together with a single paid login to gain access to them, and then profit- share based on percentage of views each site gets.

Pay £20/month for "News" and then my money would tend to go to the Independent and the Guardian, while someone else's would go to The Daily Mail and Fox News. But I could read the occasional Fox News article and they could read the occasional Guardian article, if we wanted to.

<comment><USER4> I think you may be onto something. But what about the incentives to click-bait this creates?

When I pay for content, I want the creators' incentives to be aligned with mine (high-quality content not designed to draw me in by appealing to my lizard brain).

<comment><USER5> This is a very important point that cannot be emphasized enough.

My first developer-gig was working at a regional newspaper back in 98-99.

Back then, we talked about personalized experience, how we could tailor it to the individual based on preferences.

I would come to the website and see a tailored mix of articles suited to my need. Some based on my interests and preferences, but not too siloed off, so I would still see the very important general news. It would be run by an organization I trust to be reasonably objective.

That is the kind of news service I would pay to use TODAY. I would pay 10-20EUR/month for it.

Today, I don't think that product exists. If it does, I am not aware of it.

<comment><USER6> I think you loose something by having a personalised news experience. There is something to be said for reading articles that might challenge your beliefs, personalisation of news may not be the best path forward for society. I've also found [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/) to be an eye opener on what doesn't get reported on main stream news sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a newish product out of Australia I just heard of called Inkl, that's seeking to solve this problem with a bundled subscription that includes the Economist, the Atlantic, the Guardian and the Independent, and a premium option that includes WSJ and Barrons.

[https://www.inkl.com/](https://www.inkl.com/)

Don't know how well they're doing or how good the product actually is, but it seems like the right approach.

I don't have any affiliation with the company, but am acquainted with a guy who's advising them on marketing/growth, which is how I heard about it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Blendle is a great alternative, you can buy seperate articles for a few cents from a lot of different papers. It's a Dutch company, and they have almost all Dutch newspapers, but they also have American news papers

[https://launch.blendle.com/publishers/](https://launch.blendle.com/publishers/)

<comment><USER9> I will second Blendle. I found it via HN recently and signed up. Being USA- based, I found that NYT and Economist are both available, which are value-adds for me. For example, I paid $0.19 to read a short NYT article, which seemed fair to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I pay for the Guardian and WaPo, and I'm pretty happy with this so far: I use one for UK/EU/world news and the other for US/world. You see different perspectives from each side of the ocean, and they both do great journalism that I want to support (IMO).

I would definitely pay for a third if I thought it was worth it to me. I can imagine if I was in finance I'd pay for FT or something.

<comment><USER11> The FT is a great general paper, I pay for it although I no longer work in finance. Probably the best UK paper.

<comment><USER12> I don't work in finance exactly, but only pay for them. But I would rather pay per article over several websites instead anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Someone needs to make a "Netflix for news", where you pay one monthly subscription and get access to almost everything. Then distribute the money to the sites I visit, just like Netflix or Spotify.

I see two challenges:

* Getting news sites on board. The more "premium" sites may be unwilling to give away access for cheap, but in general news orgs are desperate for a reliable income stream. Maybe a 20/articles per month limit would be fine for some sites.

* Unlike Netflix etc, it needs to work in more than one app: Each news sites own app, in the browser, and the mini-browsers inside social media apps. I don't want to type in passwords all the time just to read an article someone shared.

Apple is in a great position to do this. They have the experience with iTunes/Apple Music, and they have the leverage to make one subscription work in all apps. I just hope they don't intentionally break it on Android or Windows.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nope. I pay one (the guardian) and I graze the rest because they're very expensive by comparison for at best no better and often worse content for me.

I try to read papers I feel distinctly oppositional to, mainly Rupert Murdoch press ones. Factual content is good but sparse and a lot of opinion masquerades as fact. I don't want to live in a bubble but I can see my on bias is quite strong in this: maybe I just recognize editorial markup more clearly in what I pay for.

I'd rather pay another European or Asian source than the exemplar rates in this article.

<comment><USER15> > _I try to read papers I feel distinctly oppositional to, mainly Rupert > Murdoch press ones. Factual content is good but sparse and a lot of opinion > masquerades as fact._

That's a great practice. But even better to step beyond both "oppositional" sides, and check alternative sources that are not partisan of the two parties that alternate in power in each country.

<comment><USER16> My concern about all these pay per view plans in this thread is that they will discourage cross pollination. We will be not just learning about other perspectives but paying for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Guardian talks about their experience here:

[https://www.theguardian.com/membership/series/one-million- mi...](https://www.theguardian.com/membership/series/one-million-milestone)

It's interesting inasmuch as the Guardian is trying to be reader-supported without a paywall. You can be a "supporter" for €50 per year which, if I think of it as buying a reporter a pint once a month, is basically nothing.

Of course, it's worth remembering that people on HN complain pretty loudly if a paywalled link is shared. Have we considered revisiting that policy given the vulnerabilities in primarily-advertiser-funded news sources?

</comment><comment><USER18> For years I've been thinking about a kind of loose bundling service where subscriber would pay like 10 per month, but for no particular bundle of sites. The business would then go out to sites that users are consuming and basically say 'hey, we've got money for you'. They put some tracking code on their site and start getting paid based on how much the services users consume. It's sort of a push-based Patreon.

Never did it because the idea never sat right with me.

</comment><comment><USER19> Actually this has also something good. There is so much redundant news, sometimes the Reuters messages are just copy&pasted. IMHO the only reasonable development would be micro payments though. Being a heavy news reader, 3 or 4 is by far not enough - also I value my ability to choose where to read from myself. So a paid Google News or so wouldn't really work for me, actually their selection of articles got worse over the years.

</comment><comment><USER20> We need a micro-payment system for the web! So that you can pay per article. Versus pulling up my credit card, using the banks second factor authorization, and meanwhile knowing that 75% of the transaction is banking fees. Paypal could have solved the problem, but instead choose short term profits and to sale out, instead of long term - changing the world.

</comment><comment><USER21> None of this moves the needle on anything that matters to me. I don't want to pay another subscription for yet another business that doesn't offer material benefit. I love the long form, but I want specific benefits that matter more than as a matter of discourse.

News is now asking for subscribers to pay for what advertisers no longer will. Ok. Why should I?

</comment><comment><USER22> I think it makes sense to distinguish between "news sites".

Can the Financial Times, Economist, Bloomberg and trade publications survive on a paywall model? Probably - their readers likely consider them as operational expenses.

But I don't see how the traditional newspapers can maintain their advantage going forward.

If we develop a browser model that allows them to make money via micropayments, convince people to sign up for it, and they actually use it, some of them _might_ survive.

I think there's a lot of mental gymnastics happening here though - <USER2> I think they're gone unless outside funding keeps them alive (e.g. they essentially become propaganda).

</comment><comment><USER23> I would really like to see Wikinews succeeding. HN community can help it succeed in tech if we start contributing.

<comment><USER24> I just can't see wikinews doing serious investigative journalism, though, which is one of the major reasons that news corps like WaPo are worth supporting. A talented journalist can work on a major story for months (like in the Theranos bombshell), and you need to be paying someone a salary as well as money for flights/hotels.

Wikinews is a nice idea, but the vast majority of its news is just wikipedia- style sourcing of other news organizations. The original research it does seems to be mostly Q&A interviews.</comment></comment>


what's the best Laptop for Pen. Testing? - <AUTHOR> Would you recommend Dell M15 as a great laptop for Pen. testing? <comment><USER2> generally as long as it has solid linux compatibility then anything should be fine so my recommendation is the same as it is for most other tasks a Thinkpad T, X or P series</comment>


Everything Apple Announced at WWDC Today - <AUTHOR> http://siliconfilter.com/apple-announces-xyz/

<comment><USER2> iMessage, I hope that's on Mac (like facetime, maybe they should combine both with iChat).</comment>


Statement on the IBM Acquisition of Red Hat - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/10/30/statement-on-ibm-acquisition-of-red-hat <comment><USER2> He seems a bit sour. Not sure why this statement is necessary to begin with

<comment><USER3> They just wanted to say this:

> The decline in RHEL growth contrasted with the acceleration in Linux more > broadly is a strong market indicator of the next wave of open source. Public > cloud workloads have largely avoided RHEL. Container workloads even more so. > Moving at the speed of developers means embracing open source in ways that > have led the world's largest companies, the world's fastest moving startups, > and those who believe that security and velocity are best solved together, > to Ubuntu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reads like an assurance to customers and investors that Ubuntu is able to compete with IBM.

<comment><USER5> More like "If you've been on WebSphere for the last 20 years and your architecture team is starting to move to AWS, don't think the IBM acquisition means you should use RHEL containers."

</comment></comment><comment> dis-sys statement translated:

I have a similar business to sell, show me your 10 figures offer and let's talk.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious if Amazon will find motivation to rebuild Amazon Linux, it being based on RHEL at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER5> This reads like Mark Shuttleworth kicking himself in the ass for focusing on Ubuntu Phone instead of building an OpenShift equivalent.

<comment><USER7> Isn't that Juju?

<comment><USER5> Juju is Canonical trying to play catchup after years betting on the wrong tech direction.

I'm not an Ubuntu hater - I've been a devoted user since ~'06\. But one can't deny that RH made better business decisions over the last decade, by not chasing the "windows killer" dragon.

<comment><USER7> I don't disagree on the overall argument, but Juju is as old as openshift -- it just failed to get traction.

It seems like Ubuntu people are pretty good at coming up with usable tech, but pretty bad at fostering overall adoption of their solutions. Pretty much all their "ecosystem" projects have failed, even where the alternative wasn't particularly loved (upstart vs systemd). They desperately need better evangelists -- but they won't get them, as long as they ignore my job application ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like someone is jealous they're not worth 34 Billion...</comment>


Ask HN: Best free web hosting? - <AUTHOR>

I'm new to web programming and I'd like to fool around and try some things out. Currently I'm reading some Django tutorials and MIT's Software Engineering for Internet Applications (SEIA). What would be the best web hosting service?<p>Or would it be better for me to just practice on my own PC (winxp)? <comment><USER3> You need to know how to build a local development environment, anyway, so start with a virtual machine running Linux (I recommend CentOS or Debian or an Ubuntu LTS release; since they'll all work well on a real server later). VirtualBox is free and works fine.

There are a number of projects and products out there to help you setup and manage a LAMP server. (I happen to work on one, that is available in a free version: <http://www.virtualmin.com> )

A week or two of that and you'll have a good idea of what you want and need out of a host. The free options aren't going to give you a lot of flexibility...App Engine gives you a Python and Django environment, but the back end is downright bizarre if you're following along with traditional MySQL and LAMP based tutorials. Heroku is awesome, but you get what they give you (Ruby On Rails). If you need to send mail, you'll have to ship it out through someone else (possibly GMail), as you won't be able to run local SMTP.

But, if you're just tinkering, you can probably get by with anything that allows you to run the kind of apps you want to build.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google App Engine - Java, Python

Heroku - <USER2>

localhost with dyndns

virtual machines</comment>


mRemoteNG 1.71 Now Available - <AUTHOR> http://forum.mremoteng.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2071

<comment><AUTHOR> mRemoteNG is an open source, tabbed, multi-protocol, remote connections manager. It allows you to view all of your remote connections in a simple yet powerful tabbed interface.</comment>


Wearable Power Assist Suit - <AUTHOR> http://www.we.kanagawa-it.ac.jp/~yamamoto_lab/pas/index.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen 4 or 5 of these power suits coming out of academia in Japan. There seems to be a ton of research aimed at the rapidly aging population there. Definitely a business opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER2> this is pretty cool but looks rather uncomfortable.</comment>


FCC chief wants smartphones' hidden FM radios turned on - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/16/14636508/ajit-pai-smartphone-fm-radio-activation <comment><USER2> Submitted title gives the impression that he's going to do something about it. Actual article title: "FCC chief wants smartphones' hidden FM radios turned on, but won't do anything about it"

<comment><USER3> This. From the article:

""As a believer in free markets and the rule of law, I cannot support a government mandate requiring activation of these chips," Pai said. He believes the FCC doesn't have the power to issue such a mandate and says it's best for the market to sort things out."

<comment><USER4> Sometimes when the rights of sellers and the rights of buyers clash, it becomes obvious that the rights of buyers should be protected by the government through regulation since the market isn't fully free due to monopolistic or oligopolistic market forces. Even Mr. Pai can see that this is stupid, but is unwilling to require manufacturers to do the right thing. This is one of those cases where libertarianism loses its appeal.

<comment><USER5> Libertarianism loses its appeal because cell phone manufacturers don't want to waste money and engineering time supporting FM radio, which almost no one listens to anyway?

There's plenty of competition among cell companies, and the market has spoken; people don't really care about FM radio on their cell phones.

<comment><USER6> >... which almost no one listens to anyway?

"Traditional AM/FM terrestrial radio still retains its undiminished appeal for listeners – 91% of Americans ages 12 and older had listened to this form of radio in the week before they were surveyed in 2015, according to Nielsen Media Research. This data is derived from diary-collected listening information from a sample of over 395,000 respondents over the period of one week, as a part of Nielsen's RADAR study."

[http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/audio-fact- sheet/](http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/audio-fact-sheet/)

<comment><USER7> I'm interested to hear why people listen to terrestrial radio though (especially for people in the United States).

I stream BBC Radio 1 when I drive to work and I live in Bay Area, but I haven't found a terrestrial radio station that I would listen to.

<comment><USER8> Because I turn on my car, and without changing anything, the radio comes on. No batteries or data plans to worry about, and there's a decent interface that's integrated into my car.

I can get the same stations through IHeartRadio. I could get a phone dock, a bluetooth device to connect to the aux input (car doesn't have BT), an adapter for power (cigarette adapter), and all that. And I'd spend 20 seconds each car trip turning on BT, opening the streaming app and navigating to the station, fiddling with volume. I could stream stations from outside of my area, but I pick up worldwide news all day anyhow. My commute's for more local stuff.

I'm just not a fan of using my phone for streaming in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of these sorts of problems would go away if companies were not allowed to tie products they have a complete or partial monopoly on (i.e. last mile wireless) to things that they don't have a monopoly on (handsets). Then if a company wanted to sell a phone on a time payment plan with a broken FM radio, then then no one could complain if they did so. The market would soon "sort things out".

<comment><USER10> Cellular carriers haven't had a stranglehold on phone manufacturers since the iPhone came out. I don't think carriers are demanding features from Apple.

As far as Android, you can buy plenty of decent Android phones unlocked and just choose your carrier - as long as you don't choose one of the CDMA carriers. Not being able to use Sprint is no big loss. That just leaves Verizon.

<comment><USER11> Even with Verizon if you have a phone which supports their LTE bands, you can use them on Verizon. I used my iPhone 6 and iPhone SE from AT&T on Verizon.

<comment><USER10> That's not true of all phones though. Most phones don't support CDMA and GSM.

Both SE models support CDMA and GSM but different bands. But only some iPhone 6 models support CDMA.

[http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/iphone- faq/diff...](http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/iphone- faq/differences-between-iphone-6-models.html)

<comment><USER12> I thought it was the other way around. VZW's CDMA phones support GSM so that their customers can use them while traveling internationally, but you're unlikely to find a GSM phone that has CDMA just in case you want to switch to VZW.

<comment><USER10> There are plenty of cheaper CDMA phones that don't support GSM. Most of the higher end phones support both.

And then there is another scenario like I believe some of the Google Nexus tablets only support LTE on Verizon and won't work at all if there is no 4G on a CDMA network. It will work on 3G/3.5G GSM networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These chips are also only useful with wired headphones, since they use them as the FM antenna. As Bluetooth (and proprietary) wireless headphones increase in popularity, the usefulness of the features decrease. It also adds to confusion as to why you only get static in some cases, or a message about wired headphones being required.

<comment><USER14> > wireless headphones increase in popularity

Do they?

> It also adds to confusion as to why you only get static in some cases, or a > message about wired headphones being required.

Poor humans, constantly being confused. Life must be difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My LG Incite from 2008 running Windows Mobile 6.1 had an FM Radio, as did my HTC HD2 from around the same time. There were multiple Sandisk Sansa series MP3 players that came with FM built-in as well.

I remember the iPod did not offer FM without a dongle, probably because they didn't want radio to compete with the iTunes Store. It's probably not that different now. Lots of Android phones today (carrier subsidized or otherwise), now come with Spotify, Tidal or Google Play Music pre-installed.

It worries me that a regulatory body makes a public safety case for FM radio and won't even attempt to ask manufacturers to simply activate what is already there, in deference to "the free market". So now pushing for regulation is disrespecting "the rule of law"?

Developments like this make me wish that "open-source" device+OS projects like Mokophone and Firefox OS failed to gain traction.

<comment> X-Istence The iPod Nano 5th edition required that the user plug in head phones to listen to FM radio, this was required because there was no internal antenna, nor would one work very well with the case being made out of metal.

Not a dongle...

<comment><USER16> I believe he's right Apple sold an actual radio tuner for earlier models before the 5th gen nano.

<comment> X-Istence Ah, you are correct:

[https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Radio-Remote-iPod- White/dp/B000...](https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Radio-Remote-iPod- White/dp/B000MTEER4)

Interesting, never knew about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FCC will not step in to require FM chips be accessible on smartphones that have them; currently only 44% of the top selling smartphones enable their FM chips, here's a list of the ones that do: [http://nextradioapp.com/supported- devices/](http://nextradioapp.com/supported-devices/)

<comment><USER17> No, that's a list of phones that support the nextradio app. I did not buy my Sony Z3 and Z3 Compact from my carrier (T-Mobile). They work fine -- T-Mobile once offered a branded Z3 -- as does the FM radio. Neither phone will support the nextradio app. Although I can install the app, it says I need to contact my carrier. nextradio support says the same thing. I don't know if nextradio supports unbranded phones on their list; but, they do not support all phones with working FM radio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a public policy, it should be encouraged as many people can't afford data plans. Basically their smartphone is their computer, and they go from hotspot to hotspot for data. I also agree with the public safety aspect as well, but either case requires consumer awareness and interest.

My Sony Xperia tablet has an FM tuner, but I had no idea it was there until I noticed the app. It works well with a wired headset. It was handy in Cuba (though everything was in Spanish) and a few other places where Internet wasn't available/practical to use. I don't know that it would affect my next purchase, but it does affect my perception of how user-hostile the manufacturer is.

<comment><USER19> It should be "encouraged"? What does this mean? There are phones that support FM radio, if it's important to you get one. Don't foist the costs of this "feature" on those who don't want it.

It's pretty clear Apple doesn't support radio because it's a feature almost no one wants, and won't necessarily work as well as customers want. You need an antenna, which on most phones uses the headphones, but it's unclear if lightning phones can provide the same support. Spending money and time trying to resolve any issues would just be a waste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> As someone who was using an old walkman to listen to radio. Now I stream it, even though I'm within range of the fm station.

Mainly its convince as the rechargeable aa batteries for my am/fm cassette found another home. It seems so wasteful though, on the other hand I feel like I'm being counted when I stream.

<comment><USER21> counted, or tracked and monitored?

I never listen to FM, but I'm sure a bunch of folks are busy collecting my habits and listening preferences are a valuable input to a complete "dossier".

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I know people that have never even used an AM/FM radio. Like, if you say a radio station, they don't know what the numbers mean. I don't see a lot of people using this feature because they don't know what it is.

<comment><USER23> presumably those people have never driven a car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> As I've said before, every cubic millimeter of volume in a modern smartphone is expensive... it is precious.

Even if that functionality is available on one of the multiprotocol wireless chips, adding even a tiny amount of support circuitry to enable may not be a wise move from a product design point of view.

In the USA, an FM receiver isn't going to sell phones. VR, better cameras, longer battery life, etc. sell phones.

<comment><USER25> The FM receiver is very nearly always built into every phone processor. And support circuitry like that is trivial.

Plus, FM receivers are much less power consuming than radio over data.

My next phone will have an FM receiver.

<comment><USER26> The FM receiver is not "built into every phone processor". It is _sometimes_ built into a separate radio chip. One such chip is the Broadcom BCM94343WWCD1: [http://www.mouser.com/new/broadcom/broadcom- bcm94343wwcd1-mo...](http://www.mouser.com/new/broadcom/broadcom- bcm94343wwcd1-module/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Related:

Norway is first country to turn off FM radio and go digital-only [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2117569-norway-is- first...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2117569-norway-is-first- country-to-turn-off-fm-radio-and-go-digital-only/)

<comment><USER28> If we did this in the US it would be terrible for me. I still listen to the radio when I drive because I don't have unlimited data on my phone for streaming. My car is 16 years old so the radio doesn't support digital and it definitely isn't worth upgrading. So I'd often be driving in silence which, while not the end of the world, would suck.

My wife's car _does_ have a digital radio, but on long trips around California there are often times when I can only get analog radio because they digital infrastructure just isn't there.

Perhaps a forced change would make them upgrade, but I suspect there would be a lot more dead zones (because at least at the current power levels, the analog versions of the stations reach much further).

<comment><USER29> They used to make a device that is essentially a tiny AM transmitter. You'd plug it into your MP3 player's audio jack, and tune your car's radio to a particular frequency.

I'm not sure if this is still a thing, though. It also doesn't totally solve the problem (e.g. can't possibly listen to anything live like sports or news), but it does help.

<comment><USER28> It was FM and I have one so that I can listen to podcasts when I drive in foreign countries.

But it sure is a pain in the ass. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I may be wrong here, but wouldn't reception be pretty poor using an antenna designed for >10x the frequency of FM radio? There's a reason why most FM radios have protruding antennas - the wavelength is ~3 meters.

<comment><USER31> Normally they use the headphone cable as an antenna (which leads to contortions if you want to listen using bluetooth, since with most phones the software assumes "oh, headphones plugged in, audio to headphones it is")

<comment><USER32> Windows Phone did a good job with this; the music app let you choose to override the default and play through the output device of your choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think I've figured out what's really going on here.

I had a look at [http://nextradioapp.com](http://nextradioapp.com) and found that even the Galaxy S7 Edge has an FM radio. Curious if there was some kind of secret way to kickstart it regardless of the vendors' interests, I did a quick Google and found [https://community.verizonwireless.com/thread/908251](https://community.verizonwireless.com/thread/908251), and learned something very very interesting. (I still don't know if you can bypass it, but I'd now be surprised if you could.)

Most of the below is taken from the above link, which is recommended reading.

It appears that to enable the FM radio, you must pay licensing fees (?) of some kind, and you must also do FCC radiation testing. If you disable the FM receiver chip (presumably in a way end-users cannot bypass :( ), you get to skip those fees.

It also seems that if the manufacturer turns the radio off, it's still possible for the carrier to turn it back on if _they_ foot the bills for the licensing fees and certification.

So the carriers' position isn't too great: they're getting handsets with neutered FM receivers from manufacturers looking to "optimize" their OEM prices, which the carriers would have to throw a bunch of money at re- enabling... only to give consumers less reason to continuously use data. This totally explains why I only just learned the S7 Edge has an FM receiver in it (I'm in Australia btw).

Regarding the OP article, this whole situation appears to just be a money- grabbing attempt by the FCC. The gracious-sounding lines in the OP article about him saying that he doesn't believe he should force everyone is just fluff. This is just a careful financial drive - the FCC can't force everyone to enable the radio because it would risk the FCC itself getting stomped on itself by antitrust laws/conflict of interest rulings.

 _That being said_ , nextradio does list a few phones with enabled radios on a number of carriers, so I'm _guessing_ the fees are not too high, and I'm guessing this is simply a benign case of, say, fewer radios being sold worldwide because everyone's moved to their phone now, and the FCC is trying to continue receiving their FM revenue while the FM bandwidth is still operative - for example Norway just killed FM countrywide ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13333570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13333570)).

I'm very very curious who is footing the bill for the 80% of phones being sold in Mexico (as per the OP article).

<comment><USER34> The FCC-mandated radiation testing for FM receivers is absolutely _trivial_ compared to all the other emissions tests required by them for electronics devices, especially intentional radiators such as mobile phones. They're at the lowest tier of assessment and authorization, which doesn't even require the use of an accredited testing laboratory or filing any kind of application or registration: [http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text- idx?SID=df5370d2e0e33e10c9b...](http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text- idx?SID=df5370d2e0e33e10c9b55ce593b56af3&mc=true&tpl=/ecfrbrowse/Title47/47tab_02.tpl) Any company capable of making a mobile phone should have the equipment to do this in-house.

Now, it's entirely possible that the chipset manufacturers are charging licensing fees to enable FM radio, but as far as I can tell companies don't have to pay a single cent to the FCC for this.

<comment><USER33> Thanks for the info. Yeah, I didn't think testing for radio compliance would be too tricky.

The license agreement bits do have me a bit perplexed. I'm not sure how that works out. I was admittedly rolling with conjecture and surmising a bit in my other comment, although it did sound plausible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> To be fair, there are bodies in charge of competiton and consumer protection that should be fixing the moronic us cellphone market. The FCC is just about the broadcast frequencies themselves.

</comment><comment><USER36> In Russia, FM stations are as bad as TV. Mostly "Russian chanson" music — songs about jail life and "thieves romanticism", lowest grade pop music and propaganda news. Is there decent stations in US?

But it would be super cool if such receivers had frequency range larger than for broadcast stations and streamed raw i/q samples.

<comment><USER37> FM music is pretty much the same everywhere in the US because Clear Channel owns (almost) everything

<comment><USER38> on the west coast there are tons of hispanic stations, the occasional bollywood station, classical, talk (both liberal and conservative), public radio, country, christian

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is the FCC chief who uses the free market competition argument in favor of reversing net neutrality.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'd love if my iPhone had an FM/AM radio. I think it's silly that they don't put one in there yet, and I don't know of a good reason.

The nano's have them. I'd be fine with the headphones being an antenna. Data caps, man. I need my tunes at work!

</comment><comment><USER41> I would love to see manufacturers enable this feature instead of artificially crippling the software/hardware found in the phones.

Tuning into local tourist information broadcast is something that you cannot completely substitute with a data connection.

</comment><comment><USER42> My Nokia Lumia 920 had an fm radio.... I loved that feature of it. I used to listen to local radio/sports radio stations on the way home from work without using my data (public transit, no wifi).

<comment><USER43> All Windows Phones were required to have a functioning FM tuner. Microsoft had a strict list of hardware requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Can phones access the radio audio in software? Combine it with a low power FM transmitter for data and you might be able to make something interesting for short distance data broadcasts.

</comment><comment><USER45> Yep, because we all need more unskippable ads, the same 10 songs on infinite repeat and shock-jocks screaming about whatever.

If radio actually had some variation from that pattern, I'd support this. Instead, I'd suggest just dropping the radio tuner chip and using the space for something else that's actually useful.

The only reason they're in there in the first place is because the radio industry pitched a hissyfit and Congress decided some protectionism was in order.

</comment><comment><USER46> There's a title mismatch between submission and original post, with the original title providing far more context. cc dang

</comment><comment><USER47> Virtually all major FM radio stations can be found on tunein.com, which is how Sonos speakers support local radio stations.

</comment><comment><USER48> Why? There's no good reason for carriers or phone makers to do it. I haven't been anywhere where the radio was playing in a long time. I'd rather see the frequencies returned to the general population for fun.</comment>


Ask HN: We are planning a 6 months leave. Are there anything to look out for? - <AUTHOR> Me and my wife are planning to quit our jobs and travel for 6 months. It's always something we want to do before we have kids. Has anyone done something similar and want to share his/her experience? And anything we should look out for? <comment><USER2> Make sure you have enough money saved not only for vacation but an emergency fund for expensive trips to the hospital, car crashes, etc.</comment>


Pyodide – Python data science stack in the browser via WebAssembly - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/iodide-project/pyodide#what-is-pyodide <comment><AUTHOR> Just heard about this today. It is pretty wild imho. There is also a live demo: [https://alpha.iodide.io/notebooks/300/](https://alpha.iodide.io/notebooks/300/) Watch out though likely doesnt work on mobile and will download >50 mb of libs to work.

</comment><comment><USER2> a few months ago, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19677721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19677721)

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay makes sense that it was on here a Google search on it didn't find it but i was in a hurry so... My bad

<comment><USER2> I don't see anything to apologize for. I posted the link since there might not be a discussion this time. FWIW, I find HN's Search more useful than Google for searching HN. I used "pyodide".</comment></comment></comment>


Bill Gates' Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=502040841 <comment><AUTHOR> Found this by: <http://zesty.ca/facebook/#/502040841>

There's nothing for email@example.com btw

</comment><comment><USER2> "Sorry, this user already has too many friends."</comment>


Show HN: Who's Hiring in Tech Podcast - <AUTHOR> http://www.whoshiringintech.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> OP here.

I've started a new "Who's Hiring In Tech" podcast.

The idea is lightning interviews, each podcast no more than 5-10 minutes, in which you tell the listeners why your company is a great place to work.

Companies can put the interview link on their job ads, their careers page, their autoresponse email when someone applies for a job. The purposes being to help inspire potential employees about working for your company.

iTunes link here: [https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/whos-hiring-in- tech/id...](https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/whos-hiring-in- tech/id1499918749)

website: [http://www.whoshiringintech.com/](http://www.whoshiringintech.com/)

I'm looking for new companies to interview, so if you are hiring and would like your company featured on the podcast, email email@example.com

It's global, so companies from anywhere are welcome.</comment>


IAB Statement: Dotless Domains Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> http://www.iab.org/documents/correspondence-reports-documents/2013-2/iab-statement-dotless-domains-considered-harmful/

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently Google was trying to use [http://search/](http://search/). [http://www.icann.org/en/news/correspondence/falvey-to- willet...](http://www.icann.org/en/news/correspondence/falvey-to- willett-06apr13-en)</comment>


In Eastern Europe, the E.U. faces a rebellion more threatening than Brexit - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/in-eastern-europe-the-eu-faces-a-rebellion-more-threatening-than-brexit/2018/04/04/310a6d8e-2604-11e8-a227-fd2b009466bc_story.html <comment><USER2> This is actually good for the refugees because they won't end up in a country full of people that don't want them there and won't have to suffer from discrimination and marginalization.</comment>


California Adopts Strictest Privacy Law in U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/california-adopts-strictest-privacy-law-in-u-s/151497/ <comment><USER2> Once again California lawmakers paying lip service to constituents while walking on eggshells around their SV donors. Like the bogus Net Neutrality law they passed which was all but handwritten by/for Netflix, this one doesn't do anything to actually stop the thing people want it to.

I sent in a request for information Instagram has on me and was redirected by support to the barebones list anyone can access in their settings pane for around a year now. My request to delete all information was responded to by some boilerplate stating that said information is necessary to the functionality of Instagram and they'll "delete" it when I delete my account.</comment>


.bit non-governmental domain name registrar, for the post-SOPA era - <AUTHOR> http://dot-bit.org/Domain_names <comment><USER2> Learn from history. Repeat after me: nobody will ever use an alternate root.

The idea is much, much older than your project. Consider ipv6, and everyone is TRYING to adopt that.

Repeat after me: nobody will use an alternate root.

PS: Yes, I know what namecoin is, and the idea is stupid. It may not be an alternate traditional dns root, but the point is exactly the same.

<comment><USER3> "nobody will ever use an alternate root"

100% in agreement with this. Take spam which is a much larger significant problem. In order to eliminate spam you'd have to get everyone to completely change the email protocol habits usage etc. There is no way to patch over it. That hasn't and isn't going to happen. Major providers who control access aren't going to go along with any alternate root. And getting people to program in individually alternative dns servers or do anything "technical" in nature won't create enough critical mass. (Majority of domain names registered even with the availability of alternate tlds and cctlds are still .com)

<comment><USER4> "And getting people to program in individually alternative dns servers or do anything "technical" in nature won't create enough critical mass"

That has happened before. When YouTube got blocked for some stupid reason in Turkey for months, millions of people used alternative dns servers to bypass the block. It's easy enough to automate, which means it's simply a matter of demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can dot-bit.org domain be taken in the name of "facilitating infringement" if SOPA does pass? From what I hear, I think the answer is _yes_. Sure, they'll say they have no intention of doing that ... but as along as the law itself allows them to do it, and a service like that proves to be a pain in the ass, they'll do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The question is how they would do that, technically, since the system is distributed.

They could of course force you to give up your domain physically, by seizing your server. As a non-US citizen, my primary concern is relying on nameservers located in the US. My machines are located in Sweden. Of course, that's no guarantee that they would be safe from the FBI...

<comment><USER6> I think he's referring the the "dot-bit.org" domain, not the the "*.bit" domains. The .org is still registered normally and vulnerable to SOPA.

<comment><USER7> It could be taken down, I guess a game of whack a mole would ensue with mirrors popping up.

<comment><USER8> How is this different from the existing SOPA scenario? "Rogue" sites can be taken down with mirrors popping up. It sounds like it's replacing one problem for the same problem.

<comment><USER9> The difference is, this would be whack-a-mole only for the _one_ bit-coin.org domain, not for all the .bit domains, unlike the current whack-a-mole game which is being played with _all_ sites using top level domains that the US government can exert authority over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another thought: It would be huge if Firefox and Chrome both supported .bit out of the box. I don't know how possible that is without shipping namecoin clients in the browsers, but it seems like it shouldn't be impossible to have some sort of minimal client built-in that can do DNS lookups peer-to-peer.

If namecoin started to "just work" out of the box, that would change everything in regards to how likely this is to take over from the centralised DNS system.

Considering that both Google and Mozilla are so against SOPA, I don't see this as being completely impossible. Then again, I don't see why governments couldn't make it illegal to be a namecoin peer either, if they are already causing enough issues to warrant the system to begin with.

<comment><USER10> > It would be huge if Firefox and Chrome both supported .bit out of the box.

Yes. But don't underestimate the power of add-ons/extensions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't get why did they have to replace DNS with some kind of JSON hack which "mostly" supports the same records. There are already a bunch of alternative DNS roots[1] with their own TLDs which work fine with the existing DNS software.

[1]: [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alternative_D...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root)

<comment><USER12> This isn't a replacement of existing DNS with some arbitrary JSON protocol, this is a P2P DNS called Namecoin which happens to use JSON. Arguably, the flexibility offered by JSON can allow for sophisticated technologies to emerge which can take advantage of this naming system.

It's clear from the very article of this submission that this is the case. For instance, the I2P fields are combined in a structure that best represents the resource on the I2P network. A different structure is necessary to represent a Tor or freenet resource identifier.

If Internet naming is going to be fragmented, I'd rather it not be wasted on Alternative DNS roots, which fall privy to the same fundamental problems as our current domain name system. A Namecoin system cannot be so easily censored.

<comment><USER11> _which happens to use JSON_

But that's my point: why? I'm not saying they should implement a DNS root, I'm saying I don't see the benefit in using a new format, when:

1\. The DNS packet format is compatible with existing resolvers, which eases the transition (for example, someone could use the new system without installing anything, by trusting a Namecoin resolving server) 2\. It uses less space for the common use case - JSON is smaller than e.g. XML, but it's still hardly a small format. 3\. It's extensible for other use cases (Tor, I2P) without bloating the common - see EDNS

Frankly, I think they're reinventing the wheel, poorly, by designing their own format.

<comment><USER12> While it would be much more convenient for everybody if they implemented some extension of the current protocol/formatting, there are some issues with accomplishing that.

Names registered with namecoin have to depend on some blobs which can be updated by the name owner. The blobs need a format of some kind, and since they're already using a different protocol than DNS to achieve this P2P system, they might as well use JSON.

Also, as I stated in my comment, the structure of JSON fits better for this type of system than DNS's formatting. DNS requires redundancy to describe round-robin, and it's not easy (or elegant) to express complex structures in DNS, compared to JSON.

One example of this in practice is the I2P field I mentioned before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I published open source Faucet code recently and also launched test namecoin faucet at <http://faucet.yepcorp.com>

Feel free to request your 3 namecoins to test things out. This should be enough for actually registering 1-2 domains at current prices.

Read here more about registering .bit domain yourself with namecoins (not buying 1 year registration with bitcoins!!!)

<http://dot-bit.org/HowToRegisterAndConfigureBitDomains>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to register a .bit domain just as an experiment/for fun, but I'm a bit wary of the methods for obtaining bitcoins that I've found.. anyone have a good tip for an exchange, or experience with obtaining bitcoins/registering a .bit domain through any other means.. Or, any other related information to share?

I also can't quite figure out if it's worth my time to set one of my computers at mining bitcoins, how long should I expect it to take me to mine enough to register a domain?

<comment><USER14> The short answer is that you SHOULDN'T set up a mining rig to mine bitcoins, if all you want to do is USE bitcoins.

Simply buy or trade for them. The easiest way to do that, in my opinion (from a US-centric perspective) is to set up a Dwolla account, transfer a bit of money from your bank to Dwolla. Then transfer that money from Dwolla to an exchange (Mtgox and TradeHill are two examples), and then buy bitcoins at market rate.

Then you can use them to buy goods and services (including namecoin names). Bitcoins are the "currency". Namecoins are sort-of related (using the same underlying technology), but are a separate product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, Dwolla looks exactly like what I'm looking for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Internet will see SOPA as damage and attempt to route around it. Expect a lot more articles & technologies like this to suddenly get attention if that thing passes.

</comment><comment><USER16> What we really need is a new protocol based on Kademelia or something, a decentralized DNS.

Engineering such a thing to scale would be tough, but getting adoption might be easier than we think. It could be offered via click-to-install browser extensions and click-to-install free apps in app stores.

<comment><USER17> Google and other search engines could do a lot to undermine the current DNS as well, if they supported indexing other nets.

<comment><USER18> The second they do that, they'll only be available on the other nets.

<comment><USER19> Can you elaborate? I don't follow how that might come about.

<comment><USER20> Easy. The reason for the other nets is because the governmental ones want to censor out parts. So if a domain on the govt net starts bypassing censorship by pointing at things on the other nets, the govt will consider that domain also an infringing domain and censor it too.

Of course, we're talking about Google. The US government wouldn't lightly block google.com. But it would start some sort of battle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Namecoin is already established, and although there could be better P2P naming systems, I'm happy they're trying to snag .bit. I had a similar thought just earlier this week; Namecoin could work seamlessly alongside our current naming system as long as .bit is endorced for that use.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't think I'm quite sure what this is trying to do - can anyone explain? It seems they want to make a distributed DNS system based on the model of BitCoin - P2P keys that identify the nameservers for certain domains? This would avoid the regulation of SOPA.

But there's no way to be certain because I can't make heads or tails of that spec page LoL.

<comment><USER22> It's an iteration of an RFC for Namecoin: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2546815>

I think the point of the story is not so much the details of the novel content in this RFC - I find it hard to take seriously an RFC with passages such as "I would suggest that Verisign offer [us the .bit and .nmc tlds] as a gesture of good faith so that we can profit all profit from strengthening the original intent of DNS and the potentially criminal monopoloy handed to them by the US Government" - but as pointing out that there is movement in Namecoin and asserting that Namecoin is relevant to the whole SOPA deal.

<comment><USER23> Next line: "I mean, I don't see any other solution to begin the fair transition into opening name services that keeps them in line with their stated goals." Perhaps a dose of pragmatism would be good at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Couldn't this whole project be undermined by ICANN opening up .bit for registration with the current dns system?

<comment><USER25> ICANN's current stated policy is to not cause technical problems. For example, they will never open up .local. But if people start succeeding in popularizing whatever TLDs they want, maybe ICANN would change that policy just to screw with them.

Still .bit isn't going to work today without special configuration, so it's not at all clear that publishing it from the root servers would break anyone that was already successfully using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I written a bit about what namecoin means for the future.

[http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/technological-jailbreak- bi...](http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/technological-jailbreak-bitcoin-to- namecoin)

</comment><comment><USER27> what is the point of the .bit ? why would somebody want to use it ?

<comment><USER6> I believe this proposal started long before E-PARASITE, SOPA and similar (pending) legislation, but it has become relevant given the current SOPA situation. dot-bit (namecoins) has the potential of circumventing the DNS- censorship that SOPA might enable.

Also, its sister technology, bitcoin, has the potential of circumventing the payment-processor (ex. MasterCard) type of censorship. (See how wikileaks is being shutdown/censored)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> For this to succeed, you need to reserve a lot of the legitimate .com addresses and have them mirror their .com counterparts. If you don't mimic .com as closely as possible for all entities that matter (real people and real organizations) then .bit is dead in the water.

</comment><comment><USER27> The name of the website (dot bit) suggests the domain names will be using the Top Level Domain '.bit'. Is it the case?

Can someone give an example of a domain that would be provided by this registrar? Domain.bit would be the typical example...?

<comment><USER13> correct. for example, i have <http://room.bit/> as a mirror to my project <http://betco.in/>

Although to use these domains you need to do some leg work right now, 'cos obviously no root domains support this TLD.

Easiest for me was to switch to one DNS server from this list [http://dot- bit.org/HowToBrowseBitDomains#Use_a_DNS_server_th...](http://dot- bit.org/HowToBrowseBitDomains#Use_a_DNS_server_that_support_.bit_domains)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I really like this idea. I think it really needs to be explained better, it is very confusing how it is explained, pages that should explain are also full of details that might not help clarify things.

</comment><comment><USER30> bit non-governmental domain name registrar, for the post-SOPA era...@readers:disqus you want to make $85 hourly and $7000 per month like me just working on laptop for few hours! Would you like to be your own boss!Opportunities like this don't come by often. Don't let this one pass you by! CashHuge. com

</comment><comment><USER31> Smart! Thumbs up!</comment>


Ask HN: What techniques do you think are "unreasonably effective"? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Techniques as in workflow? Algorithms? At which point does something become "unreasonable" vs simply effective.</comment>


Snowden has done a service- Former Bush official applauds the whistleblower - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2016/03/24/snowden_has_done_a_service_former_bush_official_lawrence_wilkerson_applauds_the_whistleblower/ <comment><USER2> Obama OS changelog:

\-- Obama 2.0

"President Barack Obama has harshly cracked down on whistle-blowers, using the World War I-era Espionage Act to punish whistle-blowers who leaked to journalists more than all previous U.S. presidential administrations combined."

\-- Obama 1.0 RC1

"Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out"

from [http://change.gov/agenda/ethics_agenda/](http://change.gov/agenda/ethics_agenda/)

<comment><USER3> Keep in mind Obama voted to renew the PATRIOT Act as Senator. The writing was on the wall; everyone just ignored it

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"I credit Snowden for having a great deal of courage, because he's ruined himself forever," he told Salon.

"I don't think he has a future," the former Bush administration official added._

I'd say it depends on the American citizen/voter. What future do we want?

Not pressuring the government to bring him back means giving the government a clear thumbs-up for ever-increasing mass surveillance. And it sends any potential whistleblower a clear signal to turn a blind eye to corruption and out-of-control government activity.

Is that really what we want?

<comment><USER5> In the meantime, no current presidential candidate is willing to pardon Snowden.

<comment><USER6> Actually, Sanders is pro-Snowden. Sanders has said that he will bring back Snowden and will make sure that a reasonable settlement is reached wrt. copying data and public benefit.

Edit: "In my view," Sanders continued, "the interests of justice would be best served if our government granted him some form of clemency or a plea agreement that would spare him a long prison sentence or permanent exile from the country whose freedoms he cared enough about to risk his own freedom." (added the actual comment)

<comment><USER5> I don't think this position qualify as pro-Snowden. The trial facing by Snowden is for "treason", which is by definition false because no third party government was involved.

I think it's pretty binary debate. It's not 5 years jail time vs. life sentence like Sanders seems to imply.

<comment><USER7> The US will not seek the death penalty for Snowden. [1] So functionally what Sanders is describing is the same.

[1] [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LzcZPxv...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LzcZPxvq_X8J:www.cnn.com/2013/07/26/us/nsa- snowden/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I suspect I agree with this guy on most things, but it is a bit tone-deaf to suggest McCain should be in prison. Most people would say he has done his time. That kind of statement calls to mind McCain's famous mic-drop: " _I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the First District of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi._ "

</comment><comment><USER9> "The whistle-blower himself says he has always been incredibly careful about what exactly he discloses, and to whom. "I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," Snowden told the Guardian. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over.""

</comment><comment><USER10> Snowden as a service, saas

</comment><comment><USER11> Really hope Snowden is never foolish enough to give himself up for trial thinking he is going to get a fair hearing someday.

They will make him rot like Manning until everyone forgets about them and they die in prison.

Pretty sure Snowden will be snatched under Clinton, she seems to have peeve about him.

</comment><comment><USER12> When are we bringing this guy home? I'm so sad we haven't righted this.

<comment><USER13> Unless you are talking about bringing him home in handcuffs, I don't think anytime soon. In fact, it seems less likely today than it did a year ago.

<comment><USER12> Plead no contest to charges, no jail time, life on parole.

He could do the talk circuit, give graduation speeches, participate in panel discussions, it'd be great.

<comment><USER13> There's no way in hell he would get off that lightly. People want to see the guy executed for treason.

<comment><USER12> People want to prevent gay folks from getting married.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While whistle blowing unconstitutional surveillance on American citizens may be a service, mass dumping of info on classied programs to China and Russia is almost treason (we are not at war).</comment>


Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/the-networked-society/2012/02/step-one-give-every-kid-a-laptop-step-two-learning-begins.ars <comment><USER3> Teaching is a bizarrely evidence-free field. It's as if there's an active aversion to finding out whether a method or tool works or not. I can't think of any field where so little is known, where there is such a paucity of good data.

We've been spending hundreds of millions on putting technology in classrooms, without a shred of evidence that it improves learning outcomes. As a society we do plenty of things that we know not to work, like imprisoning people or criminalising drug users, but at least we've got enough data to say that they don't work.

<comment><USER4> That's because the goals of teaching are bizarrely ill-defined. With drug laws, we have a concrete, measurable outcome we're looking at. Most attempts to actually define a goal for teaching (e.g. with standardized tests) have been derided as measuring the wrong things and harming education in the process by forcing teachers to "teach to the test".

<comment><USER5> Exactly.

Current efforts at educator performance are attempts to apply basic economics to a real-world complex multivariate issue - how does a given teacher affect the arc of a child's overall education, when decoupled from the child's home environment and overall societal trends?

Accurately measuring this kind of impact would be more similar to modeling weather than say, worker performance. A more accurate model would be like lifetime patient medical outcomes (which we also are poor at measuring in detail)... if we could measure how good a doctor is by the healthfulness of their patients, then we have the basic model by which we can measure educators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Laptops and tablets are the most distraction-prone pieces of technology yet invented. That anyone would expect dropping them into the hands of children to increase their consumption of traditional rote-learning curricula is just _bizarre_.

The article's point about basic infrastructure is right on. What allows me to really concentrate and be productive with my $n-thousands of dollars in computing hw/sw is that I'm in a relatively comfortable, relatively calm environment with easy access to a bathroom and snacks.

[That, and I've hacked my way into responsibilities that are adventure-like. Totally agree with fellow-commenter's reference to The Diamond Age.]

Take those things away, and the primary use for my laptop becomes either a) distracting myself from the fact that I'm uncomfortable, or b) using the laptop to procure some combination of peace, bathrooms, and snacks.

Startup idea: "like Foodler, only for toilets and earplugs!"

</comment><comment><USER7> I could understand a project to give every child a (good quality) e-ink reader. These devices could be semi-locked down, and have minimal specs. That'd reduce the opportunities for use other than reading text books.

People can highlight passages they're finding difficult. There could be basic exercise questions (and these could even be web enabled).

It'd fit in well with open source text books; allowing updating of content when needed, with corrections and improvements over time.

There are a few drawbacks - there's very little interactivity and no chance for video. People with dyslexia aren't going to get best use of these devices, nor are people with learning disabilities or visual impairments etc.

But the cost would be very much cheaper than the current dead-tree text book system.

<comment><USER8> Are you referring to the in the US? If that's the case I think Universities are starting to do that type of thing and it may filter into high schools in the next couple of years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Forget the hardware.

What we really need is a way to get Anki (spaced repetition learning software) hooked up with enough logic (AI like?) to allow individualized learning with different instruction methods that tailor themselves to each student based on subject.

Of course, what I am really saying is that Neal Stephenson showed us the way with "The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" in The Diamond Age.

Now all we have to do is make it.

<comment><USER10> This is precisely what Kumon learning centers already do.

I worked at one for a few years as a tutor. Annoyingly, the biggest complaint from new parents was "My kid already did this worksheet! Why are you giving it to him again?"

I had to explain that repetition was the most important part. You could explain the science but the parents don't seem to care about that part. The parents often thought that it was de-motivational and belittling to have to do the same work over again, so we often mentioned that revisiting something you've done before and acing it the second time around can actually boost confidence quite a bit (we would sometimes make a point of showing a kid that he might not have done so well with something a few months ago, and now he did it perfectly or nearly perfectly).

PS: 99.9999% of tutoring success depended on motivation. I could teach any kid in the world anything if he was motivated, regardless of his or her knowledge when they came to us. There were only two things I figured out about how to get kids motivated that weren't:

1\. Enthusiasm is contagious. The tutor damn well better be excited about the subject. The environment better be positive, and sometimes that meant telling the parents to back off. Most parents I worked with were Indian/Chinese/strict. Most were extremely good and supportive, but some were really harsh.

2\. Provable, tangible progress that you can show the kid. This is another reason repetition is so important, it's half of the motivation, even if the kid doesn't outwardly admit it.

<comment><USER11> I'm taking a class through my university right now that uses LearnSmart from McGraw-Hill. I was pretty irritated having to buy a subscription to a website in order to do my homework ($50 plus the $230 book, seriously?), but they have a study guide that you have to go through to get to the homework that is actually quite helpful. Right up front, it presents you with the question then asks how sure you are that you know it. If you don't know it very well (even if you get it right) it keeps asking the question until its sure you know it. You're supposed to go through this every day (or so), and it will ask different questions mixed in with the older questions.

Worth the $50? That's debatable. Helpful? You bet your sweet ass. When I miss a question then get it right the next time it comes around, it's difficult to describe how I feel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it's pretty obvious the Maine paradigm is the way to go. I think peter_l_downs (1) and GigabyteCoin (2) and are on to something: games get boring. Video is the biggest problem.

I have two kids, 10 and 7, and a slightly obscene number of computers.

* They each have OLPC laptops, which they have no interest in. Occasionally, I'll dig one out to show them how they can manipulate the programs, but they quickly tire. No news there.

* We have a Touchpad and an iPad.

 __The TouchPad charges in the master bathroom, and is basically an extremely fancy radio for NPR in the morning and the kids use it as a Pandora radio in the afternoon. Please get CyanogenMod 9 stable on TouchPad. Please.

 __The iPad has games and sometimes has Netflix installed. I generally uninstall Netflix unless there's some compelling reason, like a road trip, to install it. But my wife has fairly well commandeered it as an e-book reader. We read e-books to kids before bed (eg, Nim's Island), which has proved a to be one way to condition the kids to understand the iPad is useful for something other than games. But, overall, if Netflix isn't installed, they mainly use it to play Pandora.

* They have access to two older, larger Dell laptops (dual and single core, 15" and 17", respectively) running Ubuntu, one in the spare room, one in serves as the main living room stereo, with Spotify piped to a big old Denon receiver. They occasionally use that one for music or the web; that's about it. There are probably a hundred games installed, they don't play them.

* We have a 27" iMac. They often use that for look-ups, occasionally a movie on the weekends, and occasionally some flash games. Whenever I see them playing flash games in the browser, I quietly ssh in and point that domain to localhost. The next time they visit, the browser errors out, and they move on. They also now use it to interact with the school's BlackBoard account (kill me now, please)

* There is a dual-monitor, two-CPU Dell in the garage, cobbled out of spare parts, running Ubuntu Studio, complete with condenser mic and keyboard.

We enforce a few rules

(1) No video or gaming during the day or school nights. The only exception is long trips.

(2) Sneaking off to your room with the iPad to watch video will result in the iPad being put in timeout, usually for several hours.

(3) Arguing over the iPad will similarly result in the iPad being put in timeout, even on trips.

Overall, the fantastically, overwhelmingly most common use of a computing device is music. The rest a 5-10% items. That is almost certainly due to the fact that we fight video and keep them otherwise engaged (Thing 1 is in gymnastics, Thing 2 is in piano, and rock climbs while Thing 1 is in gymnastics).

I will probably buy an iPad 3. I don't envision taking it to work. If CyanogenMod doesn't get stable on the TouchPad, I have considered buying two of the iPad 3s, but controlling what's on them.

So, again, I agree with the commenters who have observed from their own experience that young people are evaluating the utility of their tech just like the rest of us. If something's boring, or they are never exposed to it, they don't do it. Games and video are the lowest common denominator. It takes time to read. It takes time to do gymnastics and rock climbing and piano. We have to create a society where parents can and are encouraged, incentivized, to spend that time on their kids. Can Zynga get parents to spend more time with their kids?

(1) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3590627> (2) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3590416>

</comment><comment><USER13> I am pretty sure that is how it works, yes.

Sure, when I got my first Mac back in the day, all I wanted to play were video games. Because I was a kid and video games were cool.

Maybe it was the small selection of computer games available back then, but I quickly became disinterested in the games and wanted to start tinkering as soon as I knew it was possible.

Or perhaps we could simply persuade these children to think learning was cooler than video games. They are ours to mold at that age.

</comment><comment><USER14> My high school lends MacBooks to all of its students throughout the school year. I will say that it is nice to be able to look something up at almost anytime. I _have_ learned a lot from it, but it's nothing I couldn't have learned from using a shared desktop computer or my family's home computer. Still, for students who don't already have computers (the target market of the OLPC project), having an internet connection is really nice.

I will also say that the first year we were lent computers, everyone procrastinated a ridiculous amount. Games, everywhere, all the time. Very little work was being done. But now, three years later, people mostly just use the computers for work.

I don't think a laptop in itself is _that_ valuable. Maybe I'm just jaded - computers are pretty fantastic. I'd say that by far the most valuable part of a laptop is being able to go on the internet: wikipedia, forums, google, it's all incredible.

</comment><comment><USER15> Illiteracy would seem to be the first problem to solve in many of these areas, not a lack of laptops.

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5251340>

One library (card) per child might be a better goal.

<comment><USER8> However laptops are probably cheaper then building enough libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My inlaws purchased a fancy laptop for my kids. It serves as a game and Youtube hub. Occasional Wikipedia lookup for school. I help them fiddle with a few kid-level programming apps, but other than that I have the existential feeling towards computers and kids: what's the point? I'd just a soon break out the Apple 2e from the garage and let them stare at the DOS prompt - <USER2> might discover its a computer that way and have to DO something that benefits them.

<comment><USER8> Not everyone is going to grow up to be a programmer. Viewing videos and playing games are important developmental activities. Yes programming a computer is a stunning form of creation for me and many others here but not everyone shares that view. For others, music, art, writing, teaching, and building give them that feeling of joy of creating.

<comment><USER16> Spot on. Not to imply computers are for programming only. I am perplexed at how to best make a computer/laptop useful to a kid. The issue I see are: too many options, too many passive activities, or too complex creative applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We may still not know the effects of having laptops in the classroom. Five years is little time to be measuring these things, specially considering that the ones who started using laptops have not reached majority of age. This is the same as saying that a new science curriculum does not work without having a real world test. We have to wait to see the results.

This should not be used as an excuse to implement one of this programs. Just saying that no results yet is different that net negative results or no new learning. Like someone in the comments in the article said, he became interested in computers because of his Commodore when he was little, which didn't reflect until he was of age.

P.S.: And the sight of kids on the streets, even the ones who are homeless or live in really precarious homes, using laptops and laughing is really a wonderful thing.

</comment><comment><USER18> I at one point worked on the OLPC project fixing the laptops.

Lets hope that their tablets do better.

However, I doubt they will. The justification being that in my view the tablet is what the PDA tried to be fully realized. Well suited for work that one cannot sit down to do, but certainly not something I would choose in favor of sitting down to a desktop machine.

As the form factor of a device gets smaller, the quality of the sit-down user experience diminishes. This, if nothing else, is why I don't expect to see the desktop ever truly "Die" as a form factor, because it still makes the most economic (In all senses of the word.) sense for sit-down setups.

It's just that the number of people who want to sit down to a computer has dropped sharply.

<comment><USER19> Tablets are for consumption not creation. The key is the low bandwith input of "finger" vs. high bandwidth input of "keyboard".

I say they should be working on a touchscreen + mouse or trackpad + keyboard combo. Maximum input possibilities and ideal for creation and consumption.

<comment><USER20> Touch interfaces are just fine for creating. They only become limited when you're trying to emulate a different interface, like a precision pointing device, or half assed emulation of an interface like a keyboard, which relies on precise finger placement and a variety of non-visual feedback mechanisms.

The iPad has no practical multitouch input limits (I think it's limited to what int can hold), so it can track all 10 of your fingers at once, just as fast as a keyboard. Given the right interface design it has more input bandwidth potential than a keyboard, just not the _current_ familiarity.

Give it time, tablets and multitouch are still in their infancy.

<comment><USER21> No, touch interfaces definitely have less bandwidth than a keyboard, and you can't make it all up with clever tech. Fingers are huge, relatively speaking, and for touch interfaces to make up for that fact they _must_ get fewer bits out of the resulting input. The mathematics of signal processing require this. A stroke is much less definitive than a keystroke, or a mouse motion with click, etc. Moreover, you have the problem of interfering with output bandwidth as well as if you want to touch anything other than the very bottom of the screen you must obscure the screen with your hand while doing it for seconds at a time. You get less bandwidth both out and in.

What obscures this fact from your immediate recognition is that, unsurprisingly, touch interfaces are optimized to work under those circumstances, so you don't really "feel" the limitations, but you would if you really tried to push them the way a really good content creation application would.

For low-bandwidth applications they're fine, but they will never ever take over everywhere because they have weaknesses that make them unsuitable for high-precision, high-IO tasks.

<comment><USER20> I don't remember asserting they would take over everywhere, just that they _can_ function fine for content creation. By content, I did not mean "stuff created with a keyboard" and I think my second sentence makes that perfectly clear. Touchscreens are clearly not perfect multi-purpose interfaces.

But I think you're ignoring the true significance of multitouch and other sensors and the additional dimensions of input that provides. A keyboard is nearly linear input. There's a lot of 2 finger chords and a smaller set of 3 finger keyboard chords, but for typing there's nothing really separating a 3 fingered man from a 10 fingered man except for input speed. Compare that to the capabilities of a 3 fingered man and a 10 fingered man playing the piano and you get the idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> tl;dr - giving an article a skim read it appears these devices wont allow facebook or youtube etc... so my point is probably mute..

Learning begins? Or we further Facebook's cause (along with other activities that are complete waste of time, gaming and streaming poor comedy). In Thailand at lot kids / teenagers / young adults have a netbook or laptop or a smartphone, if you are being a mr nosy you are guaranteed to see the little blue bar at the top of the screen and face palm, the wealth of information that is out there..

</comment><comment><USER23> step 1: give every kid a laptop. step 2: gaming begins.

accessibility definitely plays a role but it's not the main impedance to education. you could say the same about access to basic pen+paper or regular books (libraries). this ain't no panacea - if a kid has the motivation to learn he will find a way. stupid and unmotivated children will approximately remain so regardless what tools or toys you give them (from experience of 1st world education)

this obviously within the bell curve.

<comment><USER23> depending on who sponsors this and what control they have over the content, a positive side effect of this social program (ironically) might be exposing the kids to the beauty of consumerism and opulent realities outside of their backward culture and spark the evolution out of it - in the sentiment of shanty towns sprinkled with satellite dishes

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The metrics for determining the success of OLPC and similar programs should be long term, not short term.

I suspect that few of the HN'ers who started out typing BASIC from magazines into a VIC-20 suddenly had better grades because of it.

Instead, they were learning and developing interests which have had long term benefits - and that's what education should be about (at least in so far as one buys into Dewey).

It could be that those teachers who are spending thirty minutes getting students set up with their computers are spending that time because the computer makes it obvious which students are not prepared for class - i.e. it is easier to ignore a student who shows up without their notebook than one without a computer.

</comment><comment><USER25> One TRS-80 or C64 VM per child.

Modern laptops, even simple ones like these, are too complex for a child to be interested in manipulating them, in my opinion. And I don't think the OLPC machines are powerful enough to do most enabling tasks that would help a student.

I've played with an OLPC laptop. The most interesting thing were the built-in programs to do stuff like measure distance using two OLPC laptops and sound. Not terribly accurate, I'm sure, but excellent for sparking discussion of physics.</comment>


Behind the Scenes of Super Bowl Sunday - <AUTHOR> http://blog.instantcab.com/post/75005403393/behind-the-scenes-of-super-bowl-sunday

<comment><USER2> This is awesome! Please launch in Seattle.</comment>